the case for including comparative and international ... case for including comparative and...

The Case for Including Comparative and International Educations in Teacher Education Programmes

Charl C.Wolhuter North-West University, South Africa

ABSTRACT Comparative Education has been described as having an unusu-

ally wide terrain, ever expanding. Despite this ceaseless expansion, one as-

pect that has been eschewed by Comparative Education scholars is the teach-

ing of Comparative Education. Yet. as Erwin Epstein (2011) stated at the

inception of the CIES-SIG on the Teaching of Comparative Education, “I

can think of no other facet of Comparative Education more pivotal for the

future of the field, than the teaching of Comparative Education”. The teach-

ing of Comparative International Education at Universities depends on the

place of the field in undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs.

This paper focuses on how practitioners can market their fields for inclusion

in such programs. The paper commences with a literature survey of current

published literature on the teaching of Comparative and International Educa-

tion. The body of published literature on the teaching of Comparative Edu-

cation, falls into three major parts, namely a eight articles published in the

Comparative Education Review in the almost six decades of the existence of

that journal, three editions of a book on Comparative Education at universi-

ties worldwide, and a series of articles on students’ expectations and experi-

ences of Comparative Education courses. The paper then surveys trends in

teacher education programs, and found that the long term trend of changing

teacher education programmes from a basic grounding in the sub-disciplines

of Education to training students in a set of skills or techniques deemed nec-

essary for being a teacher, akin to the training of Tradespeople, has had a

very pernicious effect on the place of Comparative and International Educa-

tion in teacher education programmes. The paper recommends how practi-

tioners of the field can muster for strengthening the place of the field in

teacher education programmes.

Keywords: Comparative education, programme, teacher education

CURRENT STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION,

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOLUME 2,

NUMBER 2, 2015, PP. 20-40

CURRENT STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2, 2015

21

Introduction

Comparative Education has been described as an ever expanding and broad-

ening (in terms of themes studied, methods and paradigms employed, objec-

tives pursued and functions fulfilled) (Wolhuter, 2014). This statement also

applies to Comparative and International Education in teacher education pro-

grammes, where the list of relevance and significance of the field seems to

be interminable. Thus far Comparative and International Education scholar-

ship has eschewed attention to the teaching of the field. Yet as Erwin Ep-

stein (2011) put it at the founding meeting of the Teaching of Comparative

Education SIG (Special Interest Group) of the CIES (Comparative and Inter-

national Education Society), at the 2010 CIES conference in Chicago, “I can

think of no other aspect of the field more pivotal for its future, then the

teaching of it”. In this context, this volume on the teaching of Comparative

and International Education is timely. Within this book, the aim of this

chapter is to identify the rationale(s) and significance of the field as part of

teacher education programmes, in order to assist practitioners of the field to

advocate for the inclusion thereof in such programmes. The chapter com-

mences with a survey of scholarly literature on the teaching of Comparative

Education, followed by an outline of trends in teacher education, and the

place of Comparative Education in teacher education programmes world-

wide. The significance of the field of Comparative and International Educa-

tion is then discussed, and from that basis a case is made out for the inclusion

of the field in teacher education programmes.

Literature survey: Articles on the teaching of Comparative Education published in the Comparative Education Review The body of published literature on the teaching of Comparative Education,

falls into three major parts, namely a series of articles published in the Com-

parative Education Review, three editions of a book on Comparative Educa-

tion at universities worldwide, and a series of articles on students’ expecta-

tions and experiences of Comparative Education courses. The last two (the

book on Comparative Education at universities worldwide, and the series on

articles on students’ expectations and experiences of Comparative Education

courses are discussed in subsequent sections of this chapter, here articles

published in the Comparative Education Review will be focused upon.

Since the inception of the Comparative Education Review, the top journal

in the field, an article on the teaching of Comparative Education has ap-

peared first very regularly, and then with increasing less frequency. In one

of the first volumes of the journal, one of the founding fathers of Compara-

tive Education and the first editor of the journal, George ZF Bereday (1958),


22

published an article entitled “Some methods of teaching Comparative Educa-

tion”. In this article he distinguishes between the area and the problem

(thematic) approach in the teaching of Comparative Education, and a combi-

nation of the two. He supplies examples of these various approaches from

programs which were running at that stage at universities in the United States

of America, as well as of textbooks used in such programs. This article was

followed up by a number of others in the next issues of the journal. These

include Edmund J. King (1959), "Students, Teachers, and Researchers in

Comparative Education," Isaac L. Kandel (1961), "A New Addition to Com-

parative Methodology", Robert Belding "Teaching by Case Method in Com-

parative Education," Comparative Education Review, 2 (1958) 31-32; and

Anthony Scarangelo (1959) , "The Use of Motion Pictures in Comparative

Education".

Then the spate of articles on the teaching of Comparative Education came

to an end. Only seven years later, two other eminent comparativists of the

1960s, Harold J.Noah and M.A. Eckstein (1966) published another article in

the Comparative Education Review, entitled “A design for teaching Com-

parative Education”. In this they reflect on their recent teaching of a Com-

parative Education course to graduate students at Teachers College, Colum-

bia University and Queens College, City University of New York. They

contrasted their teaching of Comparative Education in the mould of the posi-

tivist social science paradigm of Comparative Education in the 1960s, i.e.

teaching students about the relations between education and social phenome-

na. This stood in contrast to the old teaching which focused on the descrip-

tion of foreign systems of education and at most interpreting foreign systems

of education from their societal contexts. Noah and Eckstein proposed a new

method of teaching, namely that of hypothesis testing. This entailed the test-

ing of propositions about the relation between education and society. In their

view this equips students for fieldwork after completion of their studies,

when they can put Comparative Education into use (for example when they

are engage in foreign aid projects). In their articles they also discussed the

textbook which they used and enumerated the topics they included in their

course.

After another four years Eckstein (1970) once again published an article

“On teaching Comparative Education”. In this article he pleads for the

teaching of Comparative Education and the research methodology of Com-

parative Education not to be treated as two separate entities, but to become a

functional whole. He distinguished between the teaching of Comparative

Education at beginner or pre-graduate level, where there is merit for the

teaching of foreign education systems, in a descriptive manner, and ad-

vanced, post-graduate courses, where, linking up with his thesis in his 1966

article (explained above) and to the theme of his then recently published

book, Toward a Science of Comparative Education (1969) (in which he and


23

co-author Harold Noah propagated the wholesale use of the natural science

research method for Comparative Education research) he advocated teach-

ing students to do Comparative Education research in a positivistic manner,

by hypothesis testing.

Another five years down the line Merle L. Borrowman (1975) published

her paper entitled “Comparative Education in teacher education programs”.

In this article she attempts to answer the question as to if the inclusion of

Comparative Education makes for a better teacher. Since no research had

been done on this, according to Borrowman, she could only express a consid-

ered and motivated opinion. She argues that a thoughtful exploration in depth

of the way different human communities socialize and educate could provide

not only a substantial core for General Education but could also at least sig-

nificantly sensitize potential teachers to the most important pedagogical is-

sues. However, given the many competing demands of various scholarly

fields of Education for a place in teacher training programs in the United

States of America (as the first two articles, Borrowdale’s article limits its

periscope to the United States of America) it is unlikely that Comparative

Education will secure a firm place and large space in teacher education pro-

grams at most universities. Yet she also express severe doubt that student

teachers who get a one semester exposure to Comparative Education (in the

optimistic scenario that their program will include a semester course on

Comparative Education) will profit significantly from such a course. The

pessimistic tone of the article is continued when she draws attention to the –

at that stage just beginning of—the performance or competency-based model

of teacher education and how ominious that boded for the future of Compar-

ative Education in teacher education programs in the United States of Ameri-

ca. She concludes with the suggestion that comparativists should look wider

than teacher education programs to find a niche for Comparative Education

in university programs.

A full twenty-one years lapsed before the next—and the last, before the

articles on this topic dried up completely. In contrast to the previous articles,

which exclusively focused on the United States of America, Leon Tickly and

Michael Crossley (2001), in their article “Teaching Comparative and Interna-

tional Education: A framework for analysis” took mainly the United King-

dom, and to a lesser extent South Africa, Tanzania, Australia and Papua New

Guinea as their framework of analysis. According to them, at that stage the

debate on the teaching of Comparative Education centred around the ques-

tion as to whether Comparative and International Education should be taught

integrated in other courses of Education, or in separate courses/programs.

They argued that rather than portraying the future of comparative and inter-

national education in terms of a simple dichotomy—continued specialization

or integration—it is more helpful to open the debate further and locate it

within a broader analysis of the changing nature and context of university


24

teaching and, in particular, of courses offered at the advanced studies level of

continuing professional development. In so doing, they propose a third ap-

proach, which they call the transformative approach.

They criticize the historical way of teaching Comparative Education in

British universities as a study of national systems of education and contend

that the contemporary challenge to the national focus of educational systems

brought about by globalization that may now require a fundamental reap-

praisal of the nature and role of both mainstream educational studies and

comparative and international education—and of Comparative and Interna-

tional education teaching itself. They drew attention to the changing context

of teaching of Comparative and International Education at British universi-

ties. This changing context include the phenomenon of globalization, and the

resultant convergence of education policies and practices worldwide, stu-

dents seeking continuing professional development rather than initial profes-

sional education (and therefore Comparative and International Education

courses need to be made relevant to the needs of these students seeking con-

tinuing professional development) making an ever larger percentage of the

student body of universities, the internationalization of universities and the

rise of transnational campuses and programs, meaning students who need a

new and different curriculum (than the traditional one). The integration and

specialization models Tikly and Crossley see as complementary rather than

as mutually excluding each other and being in a state of competition with

each other; but the debate about the teaching of Comparative Education

should rather centre around the issues raised above—the transformative

model of teaching Comparative and International Education.

Trends in teacher education

This section surveys various issues in teacher education worldwide, with the

intention to, at the end, identify a place or potential place for Comparative

and International Education in teacher education. It is based on insights

gained by the author in his work as co-editor, on the International Handbook

on Teacher Education Worldwide (eds, KG Karras & CC Wolhuter, 2010,

Athropos Press, Athens).

Site of teacher education

Teacher education became a distinguishable part of education systems in the

nineteenth century, with the development of normal schools—secondary

schools to which a few senior levels/grades were added with the purpose of

educating teachers. Later teacher training colleges came into being. In the

course of time first secondary school teacher education and later also prima-

ry school teacher education migrated to universities.


25

Lately, in recent decades, there has been a movement back to the school as

site of teacher training. This trend is perceivable in two movements. Firstly

practice teaching is becoming (time and credit-wise) an ever more important

component of teacher education, secondly school-based or site-based educa-

tion (where student teachers work full-time as teacher assistants in schools

and do their theoretical education part-time by means of distance education

or mixed-education mode courses) is a growing phenomenon in several

countries.

Objectives of teacher education

The goals of teacher education vary from time to time and from place to

place. In some instances specified goals lay emphasis upon the individual,

i.e. the student teacher in training. In a second set of instances the focus is

on the education system: either the preservation of the existing education

system, or using teacher education as instrument to create a new education

system. In a third set of cases the stress falls upon society, again, either the

preservation of the existing, or the use of teacher education in order to create

a new envisioned society.

Roles for which teachers are prepared The roles for which teachers are prepared have also changed during the

course of history. Pre-1990 university teacher education gave student teach-

ers a liberal education, i.e. a teacher equipped to take his/her own deci-

sions—one of the hallmarks of a professional person—rather than a person

whose working day consists of carrying-out the dictates of superiors of a hi-

erarchy. Post-1990 teacher education saw the degeneration of teacher educa-

tion from a professional person to a labourer forced to fit the straight-jacket

of narrowly-defined and prescribed roles.

Content

The two broad categories of (theoretical) content included in teacher educa-

tion programmes are that of academic knowledge and that of professional

knowledge. Professional knowledge was historically organised and presented

in terms of the part-disciplines of Education, i.e. Philosophy of Education,

History of Education, Educational Psychology, Sociology of Education and

Comparative Education. With the shift in the roles for which teachers are

prepared, course content has changed—especially the professional compo-

nent but increasingly the academic component too—from a thorough

grounding into the sub-disciplines of Education, to training the student-


26

teacher in a checklist of techniques, which he/she will need as a teacher,

much akin to the training of tradespeople or technicians.

Method

The methods employed in teacher education have moved along with changes

in the site of teacher education, and with technological development. Tech-

nological progress and the rise in prominence of the school as site of teacher

education, resulted in the video, the radio, the television, the mobile tele-

phone, and the internet increasing in prominence, and the lecture and the

textbook being no longer so dominant.

Duration

The duration of teacher education has increased over time, from times when

(primary) teacher education programmes were part of senior secondary

school programmes (in the normal schools) to teacher education in the Euro-

pean Union (and in some states in the United States of America, such as

Ohio), where it takes a Masters degree (i.e. five years of university study) to

qualify as a teacher.

Control

In the first normal schools the teacher-educator probably had a strong influ-

ence. Teacher training colleges fell heavily under the power of education

departments/ministries. At universities, in turn, teacher education pro-

grammes were structured by the academic profession. An ominous trend of

the current age is that of governments increasingly prescribing teacher edu-

cation programmes, part of an international trend of ever more governmental

curtailment of university autonomy and academic freedom.

Teacher education educators

There is a long-standing and wide-spread phenomenon that academics from

other fields look down towards academics attached to Schools/Faculties of

Education as being quasi-academics or being inferior. Education Faculties/

academics too, compared to their counterparts in other areas, get a raw deal

when it comes to resource allocation, be it buildings, library allocations, re-

search funding, etc.


27

Multiculturalism

The reality of increasingly multicultural societies worldwide necessitates the

inclusion of multicultural and intercultural education in teacher education

programmes. This entails not only knowledge of other cultures and their

cultural heritage, but is also a matter of attitude and disposition: of creating

intercultural sensitivity.

Internationalisation and regionalisation

Globalisation, the information and communications technology revolution

and an increasingly mobile global population create the imperative for an

even stronger international dimension in teacher education programmes. Re-

lated to the imperative of internationalisation, is that of regionalisation, espe-

cially where the economic, political, cultural and educational forces of re-

gional integration are the strongest, e.g. in the European Union.

Indiginisation

At the other end there is also an imperative for the indiginisation of teacher

education, i.e. establishing teacher education programmes in mode and con-

tent and organisation consonant with national, even local contexts. This need

is especially salient in the countries of the Global South.

In-service education and training

In line with the present philosophy of lifelong learning, globally impressive

policies regarding the continual professional development of teachers are

being formulated. However, there exists a large gap between rhetoric and

reality, as these policies on in-service education and training just cannot off

the ground.

A place for Comparative and International Education?

On the basis of many of the above trends, a case can be made out for inclu-

sion and strengthening of Comparative Education in teacher education pro-

grammes, either to support salutary developments in teacher education, or to

counteract objectionable trends. Concerning the site of teacher education,

and the university’s place therein; the university is an institution of advanced

scholarship and professional education, to train teachers for a set of

(narrowly circumscribed) roles or to equip teachers with a set of techniques

to use in teaching only, is hardly consonant with the image of a profession


28

with asks from the teacher to become acquainted with the (national) educa-

tion system in which he/she functions, interrelationships between education

and society (such as the role of education in national or economic develop-

ment, or the influence of the social system as a shaping force of education,

etc.). To form a substantiated view of education matters, and to take autono-

mous decisions in the classroom, mean a teacher has to be knowledgeable of

many things outside the classroom that have a bearing on what happen inside

the classroom—national and global societal and education trends.

Comparative Education at Universities

While the field of Comparative and International Education has had a very

divergent trajectory and still present chequered geography at universities

globally, the following phases, which Larsen et al. (2013) distinguish in the

history of Comparative Education at universities in Canada, can be used, and

will be used in this chapter as a model depicting the fortunes of the field at

universities worldwide:

i. The Establishment of Comparative Education: Comparative Education

chairs or positions are established at universities and Comparative Education

courses are instituted.

ii. The Fragmentation and/or Dissolution of Comparative Education: Com-

parative Education chairs and positions are abolished or not refilled, and

Comparative Education courses are either cancelled or severely reduced.

iii. The Broadening of Comparative Education. The teaching of Comparative

Education is broadened in higher education. While there are fewer Compara-

tive Education courses, there are increasing numbers of education courses

with a comparative and international education focus or theme.

Phase I The establishment of Comparative Education

In the spring of 1900, James E. Russell taught the first ever course in Com-

parative Education at Columbia University. In 1908, Isaac Kandel became

professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Following the pace-

setting of Isaac Kandel and Peter Sandiford at Teachers’ College, both who

had studied under Sadler, courses in Comparative Education spread in the

United States after 1920. Although there was little growth during the Second

World War, after 1945 the field expanded.

The establishment and spread of Comparative Education at universities in

Canada largely began in the 1950s with courses taught and programs devel-

oped at the University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, University of Brit-


29

ish Colombia and McGill University. From the 1960s onwards, many new

faculties and departments of education were established across the country,

with a focus on teacher preparation.

Comparative Education was also established in European universities pri-

or to the outbreak of the Second World War. For example, in Germany,

Comparative Education programs had been launched at universities in Frank-

furt, Hamburg, Bochum and at Humboldt University in Berlin. In the East

the beginnings of the presence of Comparative Education at universities is

also discernable in the first half of the twentieth century. Comparative Edu-

cation was taught at the University of Hong Kong since 1920 and at Beijing

Normal University since the 1930s.

Phase II The dissolution or fragmentation of Comparative Education

In the 1970s, continuing throughout the 1980s Comparative Education cours-

es and academics who were full-time comparativists began to disappear at

North American universities, followed by Europe since the 1980s. A number

of factors contributed to this trend. First, demographic trends influenced

higher education. Declining university enrollments meant that programs not

considered essential were the first to be eliminated. In particular, the decreas-

ing number of student teachers at Western European and North American

universities led to the closure of many institutions of teacher education, and

corresponding decline of space for Comparative Education. Disillusionment

with the unsatisfactory results of investments in education since the 1950s in

combination with the economic slump following the 1973 oil crisis meant

that many governments, meant declining interest in education (if not outright

dissilusionment with the societal elevating potential of education). The shift

to neo-liberal economics since the early 1980s, and the consequent budget

cuts to higher education as a matter of deliberate policy, have meant less

money for universities.

Phase III The broadening of Comparative Education at universities Since the early 1990s, the introduction of courses in which Comparative Ed-

ucation is subsumed, is noticeable at universities in North America and

Western Europe. These courses include Globalisation and Education, the

Uniformisation of Education in the European Union, Human Rights and Ed-

ucation, Education and Modernisation, and Education and Development.

This trend can be attributed to a number of contextual forces. These include

the forces of globalisation, the related need for global citizenship education,

the formation of supra-national political groupings and its impact on educa-

tion, such as the European Union and the Lisbon Goals and the Bologna

Declaration, the phenomenon of ever increasingly diverse societies and the


30

need for multicultural and intercultural education, the rise of national testing

(such as the PISA, PEARLS or TIMSS) and the competition of nations in the

field of education in an increasingly “flat world” ( a term used by Friedman,

2006, to denote the present day globalised world, where whatever advantage

geographical location had brought in the past, has been wiped out), the rise

of the creed of Human Rights, and global projects such as “Education for

All” and the “Millennium Development Goals”.

The resilience of Comparative Education As a very rough generalisation then Comparative Education at universities in

the USA can be said to have gone through a phase of establishment, begin-

ning in the very first year of the twentieth century, picking up momentum

after 1920 and reaching a crescendo in the 1960s. This was followed by a

phase of contraction in the 1970s and 1980s, to be followed, in turn, by a

phase of broadening in the 1990s. This same pattern repeated itself in Cana-

da and Europe, each phase about a decade after the USA. In the far East the

pattern is also visible, as it is in Latin America, albeit with a time lag too. In

most countries in Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa at least) the first universities

were established around the advent of independence, i.e. around 1960, while

the university sector began to grow only after 1990. In many universities in

Africa, Comparative Education stands strong and is visible in Comparative

Education courses.

The above pattern of establishment, followed by fragmentation and end-

ing in broadening is by no means universal and irreversible. In many coun-

tries, such as Spain, Greece, most Eastern European countries and China,

Comparative Education made a forceful return at universities during recent

decades, finding a niche and a raison d’être in a new education and social

context—proof of the resilience of the field.

The significance of Comparative Education

The reasons, the purposes and the value of the scholarly field of Comparative

Education, as noted in the scholarly literature, can be placed under the fol-

lowing rubrics:

description

• understanding/interpretation/explanation

• evaluation

• application

• educational planning

• teaching practice

• in other fields of Educational study

• furthering the philanthropic ideal


31

Description The most basic utility of Comparative Education is to describe education

systems/learning communities, within their societal contexts, in order to sat-

isfy the yearning for knowledge which is sui-generis part of human nature.

Bereday (1964:5) puts it that

“The foremost justification for Comparative Education is intel-

lectual. [Humans] study Comparative Education because they

want to know”.

Understanding: Interpretation/Explanation On the next plane Comparative Education also satisfies the need to under-

stand: education systems in learning communities are explained or under-

stood from surrounding contextual forces which shape them. Conversely—if

education systems are shaped by the societal matrix in which they are em-

bedded (and if education systems, in turn, shape societies and cultures), then

the comparative study of education systems also fosters an understanding of

cultures or societies. Noah’s (1986:156-157) thesis of “education as touch

stone of society” is relevant here. The value of Comparative Education is

very topical in times of multicultural societies and of Intercultural Education.

Evaluation

Thirdly, Comparative Education serves to evaluate education systems (cf.

Wiseman, 2012: 3) the own education system as well as universal evaluation

of education systems. In an age of a competitive globalised world, the evalu-

ation of the domestic education project assumes even bigger importance—

hence the proliferation of studies such as the IEA studies the OECD PISA

studies, and the international ranking of universities. The universal evalua-

tion entails how well the education systems of the world rise up to the chal-

lenges of the twenty-first century world as well as an estimation of the limits

and the possibilities of the societal effects of education. Examples of the

latter are

• to what extent can education be employed to effect economic growth?

• to what extent can education be used to eradicate unemployment?

• can education effect a democratic culture?

• to what extent does education offer an instrument to effect intercultural

tolerance and intercultural sensitivity in a multicultural society?


32

Application: Education system planning and reform

Comparative Education is also used to design a new education system, to

plan education, and to reform education systems (cf. Watson, 2012: 32;

Wiseman, 2012). In reforming or in improving the education system or in

grappling with an educational issue, challenge or problem, one country could

benefit from the experience of other systems. When a country faces a partic-

ular educational issue or problem, a study of the experience of other coun-

tries that once had faced the same problem, could reveal the full extent and

implications of the problem and possible contributory causes; and could also

suggest possible solutions to the problem. An example is Wolhuter’s (2003)

publication of the illuminative value of the experience of Germany and other

countries which attempted a dual vocational education and training system,

for South Africa when she embarked upon such a system.

Application: Improvement of teaching practice

Recently there have appeared a number of publications proclaiming the value

(or potential value) of Comparative Education in assisting the teacher to im-

prove his/her teaching practice (e.g. Bray, 2007:15; Planel, 2008). Compara-

tive Education research can assess the track record of particular teaching

methods in particular contents. Not the least significance is the value of as-

sisting to improve teaching practice in multicultural classrooms – as Planel

(2008) convincingly shows in her comparative study of pedagogy in English

and in French classrooms. Interestingly, research on students’ expectations

and experiences of Comparative Education courses have revealed that stu-

dents too looked onto Comparative Education courses to assist them with the

improvement of their teaching practice (will be elaborated upon the next sec-

tion).

Application: Serving other fields of Educational Studies

Comparative Education is also of use to other fields of Educational scholar-

ship (and even beyond, to related fields of social sciences), e.g. for Philoso-

phy of Education, Comparative Education offers a show-case of the track

record of the implementation of various philosophies of education in particu-

lar places at particular times in history.


33

The philanthropic ideal

The original inspiration source of the scholarly field of Comparative Educa-

tion, the philanthropic ideal of the time of Jullien, remains the most noble

cause of Comparative Education. Serving and improving the state of human-

ity, is in the current age of globalization more urgent than ever—i. a. by nur-

turing a global citizen, equipped with a creative, critical, caring mindset (cf.

Scheller & Wolhuter, eds, 2011).

Research on students’ expectations and experiences of Compar-ative Education courses I have coordinated a number of research projects on students’ expectations

and experiences of Comparative Education courses. These culminated in the

article Wolhuter et al., 2011, reporting on research done on this topic in nine

countries. The research identified a host of diverse reasons as to why stu-

dents in various national contexts would want to study Comparative Educa-

tion, depicting a picture of a dynamic, pliable, ever-rejuvenating field.

In the case of the United States of America, the dominant motive for en-

rolling in Comparative Education courses is related to international under-

standing within the context of education as part of international aid. The hi-

erarchy of expectations of the American students might be understood

against the background of these students’ experience and career plans in in-

ternational aid. American student expectations may also result from the

amount of foreign aid (and education as part thereof) that the United States

of America has been engaged in the past half century, ever since the advent

of independence of large parts of the Third World, The Cold War, and the

Truman Doctrine. In the case of Ireland the most important motivation was

to help students to find a job to teach abroad. The Irish student teachers were

mainly in there early twenties and intended to teach abroad at some stage of

their career. They also indicated that they hoped it would develop their ca-

pacities to teach in the newly developing multi-cultural classrooms in Ireland

and to also develop their general teaching strategies. The Greek and South

African students looked to Comparative Education to illuminate and to guide

the domestic education reform project. Both Greece and South Africa has

recently become the scene of fundamental societal reconstruction, of which

education is not only an integral part, but in which education had been as-

signed a pivotal instrumental role to bring about. Bulgarian students’ expec-

tations, on the other hand, seem to resolve around gaining of fuller

knowledge and insight of their own education system. While undergoing so-

cietal and educational transformation as South Africa, Bulgaria as a fully

fledged member of the erstwhile Eastern Block, never suffered from academ-


34

ic isolation as South Africa did during the years of the international academic

boycott. But the existence of an non-transparent government and political-

bureaucratic machinery up to 1990 might have created a yearning to know

and to understand their education system better. In contrast to South Africa,

Tanzania has long since passed through the post-independence educational

and societal reconstruction of the 1960s—a project that bore limited success,

and whatever educational reform is currently taking place, takes place within

the prescribed fixed parameters of the World Bank Structural Adjustment

Programme (which Tanzania had little option but to sign) and the neo-liberal

global economic revolution. Tanzanian students therefore have a somewhat

more detached (from everyday practice), purely intellectual expectation from

Comparative Education courses. Oman has recently commenced to develop

a mass education system, therefore Omani students, as their South African

and Greek counterparts are interested in the value of Comparative Education

to illuminate and to guide domestic educational reform. A unique expecta-

tion which transpired among the responses of the Omani students, is that, in

a country with one public university, and 5097 students studying abroad

(total tertiary enrolment 68154), Comparative Education is seen a means to

obtain knowledge of foreign education systems, which will facilitate students

to proceed to further (post-graduate) studies abroad. Similarly, among the

Thai post-graduate cohort, an interesting expectation was what would assist

them in finding an appropriate research design for their theses. Cuban stu-

dents viewed Comparative Education as a way to gain a fuller understanding

of various countries’ societies and cultures. Cuban students’ expectations

could have been shaped by their country’s history of using education to cre-

ate a new society and culture since 1961 (cf. Arnove, 1982). They view

Comparative Education as revealing how their own as well as other societies

and cultures were shaped by education, and how education contributes to the

accomplishment of societal goals, such as societal justice.

Upon conclusion of the project, and after having written up the article, I

thought that the range of motivations and uses of Comparative Education

which emanated from the research exhausted all the possibilities of the uses

of the field. Being visiting professor at Brock University, Canada, for the

winter semester (January-April) 2012, however, brought yet another rele-

vance of Comparative Education to the fore. I lectured the course: EDUC

5P21: Comparative Education and International Education. This course is

limited to international students. Students mainly from Mainland China, but

also some from elsewhere in Eastern Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and

Africa study this course as a compulsory part of their Masters in Education

in Educational Leadership Programme. The entire course EDUC IP521 is

built around Western and Chinese ways of thought, of knowledge acquisition

and the Western and Chinese views on knowledge. The two textbooks of the

EDUC 5P21 course are:


35

1. R.E.Nisbett. 2003. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and

Westerners think differently…and why

2. S.B. Merriam. 2007. Non-Western Perspectives on Learning and

Knowing. Malabar, Fl.: Krieger Publishing Company.

Other courses in the students’ programme are: Foundations of Education,

Organisation Theory, Research Methodology, School Observation

(practicum) and Change Theory. It is obvious that this course in Comparative

and International Education serves as an induction for students into Western

education, learning styles and epistemology valued in the West, and the exi-

gencies and the philosophical underpinning of Western education. It was

clear that the cultural and educational background of these students

(Confucian and Maoist, albeit a somewhat modernized/modified form there-

of) ill-prepare these students for study at a North American university, and

Comparative Education serves as the bridging course. Nisbett (2003) makes

a well substantiated case that Western and East Asian cultures differ in their

metaphysics, or fundamental beliefs in the nature of the world. Whereas

Westerns tend to see change in a linear way, Asians, influenced by the Tao,

tend to have an eternal cyclic view of change. Aristotle and Confucius pre-

sented two different systems of thought, which laid the basis for respectively

the Western and the East Asian conceptualization of the world. For example,

whereas Westerners views of the world and their thought processes are heav-

ily influenced by the search for individual identity (essentialism) of objects

in the world and approach the world in an analytical mode of thought, East

Asians tend to view the world more holistically, placing emphasis on rela-

tionships rather than individual identity. Second, their characteristic thought

patterns differ, influenced by their respective metaphysical beliefs. Then

people use the cognitive tolls to make sense, to attach meaning in the world

in which they live in. All these are interrelated with people’s attitudes and

beliefs, values and preferences. Some of the many other differences between

Western and Eastern ways of perceiving the world, as highlighted by

Nissbettt (2003) include:

• Patterns of attention and perception, with Westerners attending more to

objects and Easterners attending more likely to detect relationships among

events than Westerners,

• Beliefs about the controllability of the environment, with Westerners be-

lieving in controllability more than Easterners,

• Preferred patterns of explanation for events, with Westerners foscusing on

objects and Easterners more likely to emphasise relationships,

• Habits of organizing the world, with Westerners preferring categories and

Eastererns being more likely to emphasise relationships,


36

• Application of dialectical approaches, with Easterners being more inclined

to seek the Middle Way when confronted with apparent contradictions and

Westerners—under the influence of Aristotlean logic—being more inclined

to insist on the correctness of one belief vs. Another,

• Debate is almost unknown in Eastern Asia. Negotiation and conflict resolu-

tion have different characters in the harmony striving East than in Western

Europe,

• For East Asians the world is an interdependent world in which the self is

part of a larger whole; Westerners live in a world in which the self is a uni-

tary free agent.

All these have implications with the way people learn (Merriam, 2007: 183)

and how they approach an education situation. The Confucian and Mao (or

then modernized Mao) cultural background taught East Asians the message

that education is teacher centred (cf. Merriam, 2007: 185), in vivid contrast

to the contemporary Western idea of education as student centred. The Con-

fucian and Maoist idea of education being knowledge handed down by the

teacher to be absorbed by the student, the latter not supposed to critically

question such sanctified handed down knowledge, is the opposite of the val-

ue placed by contemporary Western education upon independent and critical

thinking. Merely regurgitating what appears in the literature is condemned in

the West as plagiarism. Memorisation plays a much larger and more valued

role in Eastern Asian education than in the West (although a number of

scholars, such as Biggs, 1996, has cautioned against the distortedly naïve

representation of this phenomenon, ie this aspect of East Asian learning, in

Western scholarly literature). Nisbett (2003: 74-75) writes: “It is not uncom-

mon for American professors to be impressed by their hard-working, highly

selected Asian students and then be disappointed by their first major paper –

because of their lack of mastery of the rhetoric common in the professor’s

field.

Conclusion

This chapter commenced with the remark made about the feature of Compar-

ative Education as being an ever expanding field, ceaselessly venturing in

new spaces, a field with no outer circumference. In the scholarly literature a

long and impressive list of purposes served by this field appear. Furthermore

research about what attracts students to the field, what they see in the field

has revealed that this field has a significance that is inexhaustible—in every

new context where a survey is done among students as to the appeal which

Comparative and International Education holds, a new value of and raison

d’être for the field appears. In contrast to this positive outlook, in large parts

of the world Comparative Education as a field has been marginalised a gen-


37

eration ago, only to appear in a form subsumed in other courses a generation

later (broadening phase). When it appears in such a form, there is always the

problem that students are not introduced to a body of accumulated

knowledge in the field, they are not introduced to the comprehensive body of

knowledge of the field, nor to the comparative method and potential of the

field, it is then a case of “Comparative Education flowing a mile wide but an

inch deep” as Masemann (2008) out it. As outlined above, culminating in a

survey of students’ motivations for enrolling in Comparative Education

courses, in the current age of globalisation, Human Rights, diverse socie-

ties—not to mention the rise of knowledge societies and the increasing co-

lossal proportions of the global education project—Comparative Education is

now more indispensible than ever before, in educating teachers for the twen-

ty-first century. To bring home the value of this field, practitioners can do

well to first survey their own students’ views on the meaning and value of

Comparative Education, then synthesise this with the general purposes of the

field as outlined in this chapter; and use that to make a case for Comparative

Education to figure strongly in teacher education programmes at their univer-

sities. Finally, the handful of articles which have appeared on the topic in

the leading journal of the field attest to the low priority which the teaching of

Comparative and International Education has on the overall research agenda

of the field. Comparativists who have the teaching of the field at heart need

to change that. Local research on the value and appeal of Comparative Edu-

cation should be built into a general theory as to the purposes and objectives

of the field. Research on the teaching of Comparative and International Edu-

cation should develop in tandem with the expansion and progress of the dy-

namic field of Comparative Education as a whole. That will ensure both the

best teaching of Comparative and International Education and the optimal

progress of the field.

Correspondence Charl C. Wolhuter

North-West University

Potchefstroom Campus

South Africa

Email: [email protected]


38

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